We need a better cargo hauler than the centaur. I'd like to propse one.

We allready have the hive transport bot art, so we could use one of those for the ship graphic.

give it 4 large ports, a mass of 35k empty, 250 cargo, 25k hull and a medium engine. It would be useless in a fight, but able to haul a lot of cargo.

Make it cost around 250k for the hull, and it might encourage group play for mining in bot sectors, since it would be able to hold enough cargo to be worth it, but too expensive to risk on its own.

Sounds great if ya wanna solo.
Heres my concern. No ship should be too conveinent to solo with. giveing it 4 ports will make it able to mine with 2 defend with 1 and scan with anouther. No need for point defence or teamwork. We already have a ship with 4 ports and we already have a ship that makes a great hauler. I think what we really need is an easy way to transfer or store cargo in space. Shouldnt be too easy to solo mine I think it takes away from the game.

no small ports, no scanner

with a mass of 35k, fighting is not an option.
a fully loaded centaur maxes 30k, maybe 32k if its got a full load of convoy cargo.
If this thing were fully loaded, it would weigh almost 60k. It would probably be lucky to reach full trbo speed in 10 minutes.

since it only has a medium engine, its top speed is 180, meanting any ship with a heavy engine can catch it.

The whole point of this ship is to provide a bulk transport. I dont think it would last 5 minutes as a solo ship outside of nation space around a station. You would have to have another ship provide the scanning, and you'd need a few ships to provide cover fire.

Solo mining detracts from the game... how?

What we need is something that AFAIK was in the original design spec (this was in the original version of Waylon's Maurauder picture). Modular cargo storage. As in, a cargo ship pilot could purchase a "cargo module addon" which would provide more cargo spaces and would attach a "trailer" to the end of the cargo vessel.

Its a massively multiplayer online game any way the devs can get people worked together betters the experiance. Yes there should be award for solo but always a far greater reward for group play.
I however do like the idea of a large hauler cargo ship with removeable cargo container segments that can be dropped picked up and moved. Could setup a convoy of 1 or 2 of these. Which would make a circular router from a station to a mineing site. Could setup 3 or 4 point defence guards running valks or whatever favorite ship sitting there popping bots as they come in. Then have a few people in rags mineing like ants filling those cargo segments.

Your logic is both unsupported and fundamentally broken.

"Gee, let's force everyone to play TOGETHER!"

That's basically what you're suggesting, because gimping someone's ability to be effective if they don't want to always group up is just pointlessly limiting gameplay options, and very few people will be attracted to the idea of playing a game that forces them to always do One Set Thing(tm) in order to be competitive.

there SHOULD be much greater benefits of pulling together a whole team to mine like they say, Soltis. many people working together should definitely reap better benefits than one ship mining on its own. yeah, you can do it on your own, just not nearly as well as an entire group, come on. no one is forcing you to participate in a group activity anyway, you don't have to mine, or you can mine and benefit on your own, albeit very slowly.

You should never force people to play together, but you should encourage it. The whole point of an online game is group interaction. If you always solo, they is there any point in playing? Why not just go out and buy a single player game.